What is your interpretation of Romeo and Juliet?

[cathmom]

How would you sum it up in a sentence or two? What is its message? Who was responsible for their deaths?

[Old Dominion Heather]

When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

 

Seriously, the families assumed, the lovers assumed, and they made poor choices based on wrong assumptions.

[DianeW88]

Too stupid to live....both of them.

 

Sorry, but that play drives me bonkers.

 

And, I'm reading it with my dd this year. Yey. :glare:

 

She's a ballerina, so we'll watch the ballet on DVD. I do actually enjoy that. It will be a bit redundant for her since she appeared in the production with the ballet company here, but she hasn't seen it from the audience, so that will be different.

 

 

Diane W.

married for 22 years

homeschooling 3 kiddos for 16 years

[Mejane]

Raging hormones and feuding families don't mix.

 

I like ODH's interpretation, too. :D

Edited June 5, 2010 by Mejane

[Old Dominion Heather]

Too stupid to live....both of them.

 

: ) Theme: Survival of the fittest?

[cathmom]

Can we hear from some who actually like it LOL?

 

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

 

:lol:

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

There's not much to like in that play apart from the writing..

 

Any teenager who would behave that day nowadays would be (or should be!) seriously grounded.

[Aubrey]

I hated this play until I taught it to a group of freshmen. We started w/ the edgier di Caprio film, & I had girls sitting on the edges of their seats because they. actually. did. not. know. what was going to happen.

 

We had long conversations about revenge. These were drug dealers, parents of multiple children, & gang members in my classroom. I set it up like a gang war--the Capulets vs the shoot. The other guys.

 

Anyway. Two things that changed my mind about the play:

 

1. Dante's vision of True Love was the reigning idea at the time Shakespeare was writing. "Love at first sight" was considered pure & true because your head hadn't had time to get selfish desire & lust mixed up w/ the whole thing. So Juliet is Romeo's Beatific Vision. It changes a lot if you accept their love as true, which Shakespeare's audience would have.

 

2. I'd always read R&J as a tragedy, but one day I noticed that Hamlet is actually titled "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." So I looked at R&J again. Not marked like many of the other plays. The classic definitions of comedy & tragedy are a union of people who were not unified in the beginning (usually thr marriage) & a disunion of people who were formerly united.

 

Romeo & Juliet fits the classic definition of a comedy, surprisingly. R&J are married, since they both die, I think they could be said to remain together. But they're NOT the main point of the play. The guy at the end--I can't remember what he is, a duke or something--makes a big speech about what can be learned from this. It's a classic "Here's what you were supposed to get from this" kind of ending, which is annoying, but it points to the healing of wounds, the reuniting of two families & putting away of old wounds.

 

Suddenly, R&J is as rich & deep as Shakespeare's other work.

 

Fwiw, splitting the class into rival gangs was kinda a bad idea. I let them throw paper wads at ea other when their side attacked the other in the story, to keep them paying attention. Instead, they started stockpiling weapons. :lol:

[Mejane]

Tiny bit OT, but we saw West Side Story in conjunction with studying R&J. The former is considered a modern version of the latter.

[Colleen in SEVA]

Romeo & Juliet is like all the Disney princess movies. Girl (young and busty) meets guy (young and rich, usually the only 2 qualities featured), girl wants guy, girl has a slight road bump in the way of getting the guy (he's not a mermaid, he's a monster, he's a prince, he's a Montague), girl yells at her single parent that they just don't understand and runs away after the guy, her life is put into danger, someone or something defies the laws of physics or nature to save her, she marries the guy (and the single parent forgives her and accepts the guy, yet has a look on their face like "Thank goodness she's your problem now").

 

Except in Romeo & Juliet, they both play the role of the princess and they kill themselves.

[DianeW88]

1. Dante's vision of True Love was the reigning idea at the time Shakespeare was writing. "Love at first sight" was considered pure & true because your head hadn't had time to get selfish desire & lust mixed up w/ the whole thing. So Juliet is Romeo's Beatific Vision. It changes a lot if you accept their love as true, which Shakespeare's audience would have.

 

I have no doubt that perhaps Shakespeare's audience would have interpreted the love between Romeo and Juliet as true. I have a personal problem seeing it as such, simply because Romeo spends the entire first scene he's in wringing his hands and wailing over how much he loves Rosaline and doesn't think he can possibly live without her. Until he sees Juliet. :blink:

 

My cynical nature causes me to suspect that Romeo is thinking with a part of his body other than his brain for the rest of the play. :glare:

 

Diane W.

married for 22 years

homeschooling 3 kiddos for 16 years

[Aubrey]

I have no doubt that perhaps Shakespeare's audience would have interpreted the love between Romeo and Juliet as true. I have a personal problem seeing it as such, simply because Romeo spends the entire first scene he's in wringing his hands and wailing over how much he loves Rosaline and doesn't think he can possibly live without her. Until he sees Juliet. :blink:

 

My cynical nature causes me to suspect that Romeo is thinking with a part of his body other than his brain for the rest of the play. :glare:

 

Diane W.

married for 22 years

homeschooling 3 kiddos for 16 years

 

I think this is the equivalent of a modern romantic comedy in which a guy is eaten up by love for someone who's completely wrong for him...until he reads something written by some girl, & he's absolutely captivated by her mind. Think "You've Got Mail." That's our modern understanding of true love, & the significance is that he forgets the false love.

 

Maybe. :lol:

[Margaret in GA]

There is a song from the 1960's movie (which I love) and I think it does a fine job of describing what I believe to be one of the themes-- the impetuousness of these passionate youths. On a related note, I just watched The Last Train Station which was partly about Tolstoy and his wife in their later years together in which they had lost the spark of their marriage. Meanwhile, a man (Valentin) who is living and working with him is falling passionately in love with a girl. The movie contrasts the end of life with the one you have loved and the beginning of that love. Reading these lyrics reminded me of that movie and how beautiful love's beginning really is. Anywho, here is the song:

 

What is a youth? Impetuous fire.

What is a maid? Ice and desire.

The world wags on.

 

A rose will bloom

It then will fade

So does a youth.

So do-o-o-oes the fairest maid.

 

Comes a time when one sweet smile

Has its season for a while...Then love's in love with me.

Some they think only to marry, Others will tease and tarry,

Mine is the very best parry. Cupid he rules us all.

Caper the cape, but sing me the song,

Death will come soon to hush us along.

Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall.

Love is a task and it never will pall.

Sweeter than honey...and bitter as gall

Cupid he rules us all

[Caroline]

Here is a great article by Strogatz from the NYT last year that describes Romeo and Juliet's love with differential equations. I use this piece in AP Calculus when we discuss diff eqs because they read Romeo and Juliet as freshman, and I am sure they have forgotten it by the time they get to me. I think of it as literacy across the curriculum.

 

I saw Romeo and Juliet performed as a comedy when I was in high school. It made me see the play in a new light. However, I must say I am a West Side Story fan.

[Stacia]

You might like the (severely) condensed verion at Book-A-Minute Classics. :lol:

[DianeW88]

You might like the (severely) condensed verion at Book-A-Minute Classics. :lol:

 

LMHO....that was hysterical. As my teens in a co-op pointed out to me a couple of years ago, the balcony scene could be entirely eliminated in the present day with one text from Romeo to Juliet:

 

"Hey, U R hot? Wanna hang out?"

 

Yes, I had them re-write parts of it in modern English set in the present day. It was HYSTERICAL! :lol:

 

Diane W.

married for 22 years

homeschooling 3 kiddos for 16 years

[Food4Thought]

Haste makes waste. :D

 

I used to love, love, LOVE this play in high school. I think Leonardo de Caprio was part of the reason. I was in love with the idea of being so in love with someone that I would just die if they died.

 

As an adult, I tend to believe that the morals of the film rest with the priest, who is constantly telling everyone to wait - slow down - don't make any rash decisions - make sure you have all the facts. And that goes for every single person in the play, from the nanny to the parents to the cousins and everyone else.

 

Someone once suggested to me that it was actually a political play, having to do with France & England at the time, but I can't wrap my head around why. Has anyone else heard that?

[nd293]

Apart from the suicides, Romeo and Juliet is really a timeless story about the senselessness of fueds that put principles (or just past history) above people.

 

I would definitely watch /read it in conjunction with West Side Story.

 

Years ago I watched a documentary called "Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo" about a Christian boy and Muslim girl who died trying to escape the city together. Worth watching if you think the general theme of the play is not relevant to today.

[cathmom]

I guess I'm surprised that so many don't like this play. Is it because you were tortured with it in school?

[IsabelC]

Any teenager who would behave that day nowadays would be (or should be!) seriously grounded.

Yep, I'd definitely ground my child for being dead; it's very inconsiderate :lol:

[juelle]

Still giggling at Hotdrink's response.

 

But I've always felt the waste of it. Why do they assume so quickly and act irrevocably on their assumptions? Was WS more comfortable with the brevity and brutality of life than I am?

[Kim in Appalachia]

I think that is what I always got out of it. Even true love can not stand against blind hate. Hate wins out. That's what makes it a tragedy. It's very depressing. I think Shakespeare is trying to present genuine love and then show how real love is destroyed by hate. It's the simplelist answer, kind of obvious, but I think that is what he was going for. Midsummer Nights Dream is the opposite; love does win. The father's anger is abated and the 4 end up happy.

[OrganicAnn]

I think it would be interesting to study R & J with Measure for Measure. Both are concerned with love, individual wants vs family/society wants, arranged marriages, death or threat of death. Tragicomedy?

[Food4Thought]

I think that is what I always got out of it. Even true love can not stand against blind hate. Hate wins out. That's what makes it a tragedy. It's very depressing. I think Shakespeare is trying to present genuine love and then show how real love is destroyed by hate. It's the simplelist answer, kind of obvious, but I think that is what he was going for. Midsummer Nights Dream is the opposite; love does win. The father's anger is abated and the 4 end up happy.

 

Does hate really win though? Or does love, in death, create peace? I never thought it was all that depressing - I thought there was at least a small light of hope at the very end.

[Ester Maria]

:lol:

As with any other literary work, there is no "point" of this one either.

 

An element in a literary work makes a complex net of connections to the other elements in that same literary work and gets its meaning in THAT structure from THOSE connections. Its meaning is not derived from its meaning in what's usually referred to as "the real life" (if we can postulate a uniform meaning for an event in real life anyway - also, note that what constitutes an "event" in real life doesn't necessarily constitute an "event" in a literary work and vice-versa since the overall structure we talk about is fundamentally different from the point of view of necessity and causality etc., but I won't get into that now). It's pointless to discuss it from that perspective, especially if we add to it the generational and cultural gap.

 

Reading various "life meanings" into literary works is probably one of THE misreadings of literature. It's also my second pet peeve when it comes to reading a text in general (right after various shades of biographists and positivists who read a work as a product of its context and "life and times" of its author).

[Kirch]

You might like the (severely) condensed verion at Book-A-Minute Classics. :lol:

 

Okay, thanks. I just wasted half an hour between that list, the ultra-condensed bedtime books, and the movies. Too funny! :lol:

[Aubrey]

:lol:

As with any other literary work, there is no "point" of this one either.

 

An element in a literary work makes a complex net of connections to the other elements in that same literary work and gets its meaning in THAT structure from THOSE connections. Its meaning is not derived from its meaning in what's usually referred to as "the real life" (if we can postulate a uniform meaning for an event in real life anyway - also, note that what constitutes an "event" in real life doesn't necessarily constitute an "event" in a literary work and vice-versa since the overall structure we talk about is fundamentally different from the point of view of necessity and causality etc., but I won't get into that now). It's pointless to discuss it from that perspective, especially if we add to it the generational and cultural gap.

 

Reading various "life meanings" into literary works is probably one of THE misreadings of literature. It's also my second pet peeve when it comes to reading a text in general (right after various shades of biographists and positivists who read a work as a product of its context and "life and times" of its author).

 

:lol: Well, if that's true, no wonder so many people think there's no point to Lit degrees.

[cathmom]

:lol:

As with any other literary work, there is no "point" of this one either.

 

An element in a literary work makes a complex net of connections to the other elements in that same literary work and gets its meaning in THAT structure from THOSE connections. Its meaning is not derived from its meaning in what's usually referred to as "the real life" (if we can postulate a uniform meaning for an event in real life anyway - also, note that what constitutes an "event" in real life doesn't necessarily constitute an "event" in a literary work and vice-versa since the overall structure we talk about is fundamentally different from the point of view of necessity and causality etc., but I won't get into that now). It's pointless to discuss it from that perspective, especially if we add to it the generational and cultural gap.

 

Reading various "life meanings" into literary works is probably one of THE misreadings of literature. It's also my second pet peeve when it comes to reading a text in general (right after various shades of biographists and positivists who read a work as a product of its context and "life and times" of its author).

 

Ester Maria, I respectfully disagree. I think one of the best uses of literature is to find meaning in our lives. However, in this case, as the OP, I specifically wanted the kinds of interpretations that you feel are invalid for a personal reason. But you couldn't have known that LOL.

 

:lol: Your use of smilies is noted!

[Jen in PA]

I always thought that it was about the danger of living too much in the moment with no grounding in the realities of past and future. Both the family feud and the love affair become all-consuming because the participants are so short-sighted.

[Stacia]

Okay, thanks. I just wasted half an hour between that list, the ultra-condensed bedtime books, and the movies. Too funny! :lol:

 

Always happy to oblige. ;):D

 

(I love the description for Dante's Inferno, lol.)

[Ester Maria]

:lol: Well, if that's true, no wonder so many people think there's no point to Lit degrees.

But of course, didn't you know that Lit degrees are for those that are unwilling to deal with anything "concrete" in their lives, and yet need a degree so their families don't disown and/or disinherit them? :lol:

I think one of the best uses of literature is to find meaning in our lives.

That's also a legitimate use of a literary work. Definitely not the one I would recommend for the *study* of it though.

Sorry for hijacking your thread. Professional deformation I guess. ;)

Edited June 5, 2010 by Ester Maria

[EmilyK]

The essence of tragedy is waste.

 

can't remember who said that -- Aristotle?

 

Anyway, a high school essay I had to write over 30 years ago was applying that quote to Romeo and Juliet and it still sums it up to me.

[Aubrey]

But of course, didn't you know that Lit degrees are for those that are unwilling to deal with anything "concrete" in their lives, and yet need a degree so their families don't disown and/or disinherit them? :lol:

 

 

Hmmm...sounds like you went to a more modern school than I did. I'm w/ you on the not interpreting things in light of the author's bio--ee cummings' ideas of the reality created by the poets is my favorite & often the subject of debate w/ my hist major dh, but most of the first half of your previous post is in complete opposition to a classical interpretation of literature.

 

Unless by "no point" you are paraphrasing Eliot: "The poetry does not matter." But that's a whole other thread. ;)

 

We actually had a lit analysis class in which the prof warned us about "postmodern interpretations." I'm sure you had to be there, but this guy had one very old brown suit, a monotone, & had spent half the semester on Nietzsche, Derrida, & Heart of Darkness. Then he did one of those rare prof sighs of relief where their lips actually flap & started talking in a normal voice about how he hates the stuff that's come out of a lot of universities since then. To this day, it cracks me up. :lol:

[Ester Maria]

Hmmm...sounds like you went to a more modern school than I did.

God forbid. :D

 

I actually clicked with the formalists first and then with some of what I considered their indirect "legacy", and with semiotics later (via structuralism), but that was quite heretical at times. Hardly anything more modern than that.

 

At this point with kids I approach literature mostly through watered down Bakhtin and Lotman though. While I definitely don't do the whole "what the author wanted to say" or "let's read the historical context into the work" thing, I also don't do the différance thing, especially not to the extreme.

 

The first part of my post was, if anything, a variation of the "blood is not bloody" thing. NOT anything more extreme than that :D, though I can see why it might have occurred you so.

[Colleen in SEVA]

I guess I'm surprised that so many don't like this play. Is it because you were tortured with it in school?

 

Yes. We studied it for weeks on end in 8th grade (too young!), then I moved to another state and they studied it in 10th grade, then I moved to another state and they studied it in 11th grade. By the third time, I was really quite done with it.

 

I am a very practical, logical person and CAN NOT STAND Juliet. Or princesses. I am glad I have boys and don't have to be tortured with princess movies. :)

[Dana]

Not a retelling of Romeo & Juliet, but a fun book: Julie and Romeo. The author got the idea as "what if Romeo & Juliet met at 60 instead of 16". May be a fun read.

 

We had the Zeffereli film on video and my sister watched it OVER and OVER and kept playing that dratted ballad quoted earlier. Blech.

 

I do like R&J. One of the things that stands out for me is how just one change could have changed the outcome. Had Romeo got the message they'd both have lived. If Juliet woke up just a bit sooner... It's the same sense I get with the story of The Titanic - one change could have had a different outcome.

[Melora in NC]

I always thought it was a story about emotionally overwraught children and adults with poor judgement and what an unfortunate combination this is, and it has been one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays. Reading through this thread, though, has opened my eyes to new ways of looking at it, and I think I may enjoy it more and get more out of it next time!

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

How would you sum it up in a sentence or two? What is its message? Who was responsible for their deaths?

 

 

Well, at the risk of being different, I will say that Shakespeare himself was responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. :D

 

I believe that it was an extremely clever bit of entertainment for the masses.

Can't you just see adolescent girls quoting bits to each other? Even if they were forbidden to see it, surely such a melodramatic story would be circulating like crazy.

 

I bet it was a favorite topic of conversation in it's day, especially among women. Kind of like Twilight.

 

 

 

:auto:

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

:lol:

As with any other literary work, there is no "point" of this one either.

 

An element in a literary work makes a complex net of connections to the other elements in that same literary work and gets its meaning in THAT structure from THOSE connections. Its meaning is not derived from its meaning in what's usually referred to as "the real life" (if we can postulate a uniform meaning for an event in real life anyway - also, note that what constitutes an "event" in real life doesn't necessarily constitute an "event" in a literary work and vice-versa since the overall structure we talk about is fundamentally different from the point of view of necessity and causality etc., but I won't get into that now). It's pointless to discuss it from that perspective, especially if we add to it the generational and cultural gap.

 

Reading various "life meanings" into literary works is probably one of THE misreadings of literature. .

 

I think I agree with this. :001_smile:

[Mejane]

 

An element in a literary work makes a complex net of connections to the other elements in that same literary work and gets its meaning in THAT structure from THOSE connections. Its meaning is not derived from its meaning in what's usually referred to as "the real life" (if we can postulate a uniform meaning for an event in real life anyway - also, note that what constitutes an "event" in real life doesn't necessarily constitute an "event" in a literary work and vice-versa since the overall structure we talk about is fundamentally different from the point of view of necessity and causality etc., but I won't get into that now). It's pointless to discuss it from that perspective, especially if we add to it the generational and cultural gap.

 

Reading various "life meanings" into literary works is probably one of THE misreadings of literature. It's also my second pet peeve when it comes to reading a text in general (right after various shades of biographists and positivists who read a work as a product of its context and "life and times" of its author).

 

I think you just articulated why I find many "classic" works of literature archaic and rather pointless to read other than for their historical significance. They have no real relevance to modern life, as much as we may try to imbue them with such. (Or am I misunderstanding you completely? :001_smile:)

Edited June 5, 2010 by Mejane

[mcconnellboys]

Each person is ultimately responsible for themselves. Everyone in this story failed to research, investigate, and find out the truth of the matter before jumping to conclusions. Ah, hormones! How brash they make us!

[Aubrey]

I think you just articulated why I find many "classic" works of literature archaic and rather pointless to read other than for their historical significance. They have no real relevance to modern life, as much as we may try to imbue them with such. (Or am I misunderstanding you completely? :001_smile:)

 

I strongly disagree w/ Ester Maria on this point, so you can take what I say w/ a grain of salt, but I believe that what makes the classics classic is the very fact that they DO have relevance to us in modern life. Great literature grapples w/ the fundamentals of human nature & existence in a way that transcends time & lets us see for a moment how little we've really changed.

 

It's not that lit is trying to teach us something like a fable; it's that it's dealing w/ the questions that don't lie clearly in the black or the white. It's taking the gray issues, examining them, making us think. Lit allows us to grow empathy, mature our emotional intelligence, etc. Not that lit is the only way to do that, just that...sharing stories w/ people connects us. Whether it's sitting in a lazy-boy listening to your grandfather tell stories or sitting in class listening to Homer & Shakespeare tell their stories.

[Nan in Mass]

I always thought, even when we read it in eighth grade (or maybe because we read it in eighth grade), that it was about teenagers. That is probably hopelessly ignorant and simplistic. I still think Shakespeare manages to make his teenagers very realistic. Why does any author write anything, anyway? I have always assumed that Shakespeare was remembering himself and reminding the rest of us what it is like to be a teenager (and to some extent the parent of a teenager). I think it is about teenagers and how they suddenly find themselves capable of thinking of themselves separately from their families, or forced to do so by approaching the age of being married off or being sent off to college or being expected to get a job and moving out, teenagers for the first time capable of doing something concrete about their crushes and their hatreds. Perhaps because I live in the thick of the teenage world at the moment, I find the story altogether too realistic for comfort. It doesn't even need to be reset in the inner city. Do you need a reason for writing other than just the joy of writing believable characters in just the right words, one that is more cynical and financial? Why couldn't Shakespeare have written a story that would make the parents of teenagers in his audience groan with the familiarity of it all and go home either feeling comforted that they aren't the only ones? Or thankful that their children, troublesome as they might be, are at least still alive? Or more sympathetic towards them, having been reminded of what it was like to be that age? Or remembering their own near-misses at being stabbed by the other clique? Or remembering their own first loves? Or feeling more alive for being reminded of what an alive time of life that is? Or admiring Romeo and Juliet for taking action? Or being glad they themselves didn't in similar situations? Or something like that? I know the play seems a little over the top, but that is so true of that age...

-Nan

[myfunnybunch]

Ah, hormones! How brash they make us!

 

*snort!* Yeah, this. LOL.

 

Both of my daughters said this, in their own ways, after they read Romeo and Juliet.

 

I love Romeo and Juliet and always have, from the first time I read it at...13? It makes me remember what it was like to be young and to be completely carried away by the idea of True Love.

 

I got to read it with my daughters, first the dreamy one (who enjoyed it but liked A Midsummer Night's Dream better), then the autistic one (who hated it because the language was SO difficult for her, but liked Mercutio). Interesting to get such different perspectives, and also to see how my own perspectives and interpretations have changed as I've changed. As a teen, I'd have said R&J is a love story, and that's how my daughters saw it too, mostly. As an adult and a parent, I see it more as a romantic and tragic cautionary tale.

 

One of the very most interesting conversations I had with my oldest daughter ever during her homeschooling years was "Why read this play now, and what did you glean from it?" She had some insightful and thoughtful things to say about our culture and teens in general and being a teen herself and growing up.

 

Which is really the point of good literature, I think. Not necessarily to Learn a Lesson, but to make us think and to spark good conversations.

 

Cat

[tex-mex]

Raging hormones and feuding families don't mix.

 

I like ODH's interpretation, too. :D

:iagree: I was thinking it was more like 2 horny teens in lust -- mix in some rebellion -- and parents who were dysfunctional and out of touch. Really has the makings of a Maury Povich talk show. ;) As an Aspie... I also hated reading this play in high school. *UGH*

[Aubrey]

Each person is ultimately responsible for themselves. Everyone in this story failed to research, investigate, and find out the truth of the matter before jumping to conclusions. Ah, hormones! How brash they make us!

 

Hormones? Gosh, I know R&J were brash, but they came a lot closer to *thinking* than their parents did.

 

Personal responsibility *may* be a modern reinterpretation. At the time Shakespeare was writing, I bet there was more of a "brother's keeper" mentality. Iow, the play also shows how we're all connected & how the decisions we make as individuals are ripples across the community. *Any* one person in this story could have changed the *whole* outcome.

 

What about the priest who gave Juliet the poison, for ex, or the apothecary who gave Romeo the poison? We hold the kids who go on shooting sprees responsible, but we also hold the adults in their lives responsible, if for nothing else, providing them with weapons.

 

I guess my point is to remember what the play would have looked like originally, remembering the audience & context, the way of life that depended so much upon neighbors & community. I think our lives today, while very disconnected, do still depend on others. It's more invisible, perhaps, but our decisions still have ripple effects across society.

 

For ex, my gr-grandfather was in New London, Tx, sitting across from the school there the day it blew up. He was working as an ins salesman, so after helping clean up the bodies & the rubble, he began helping people collect life ins. One woman had caught her son playing hookey, fishing, I think, chewed him out, & sent him back earlier in the afternoon.

 

Grand Dad told us lots of stories about that day & the people there, but that one in particular deeply impacted my mom, & she was never able to *force* us to go to school when she thought we were faking being sick. She didn't tell me this until I was grown, of course, but the story of that woman always haunted her.

 

We're more connected than we realize.

[fivetails]

 

I bet it was a favorite topic of conversation in it's day, especially among women. Kind of like Twilight.

 

 

Funny you mention that ~ dd13 is suddenly interested in the story of Romeo & Juliet, and it's all because of the Twilight series. :laugh:

 

I've never actually read the play (I know the general storyline, of course) myself, so we're going to read it together over the summer, along with watching that movie someone else mentioned - the one with the Titanic guy. She actually wants to watch the movie *first* .. I'm not sure whether we should watch it first or save it for after.

[cathmom]

Well, at the risk of being different, I will say that Shakespeare himself was responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. :D

 

 

 

I like that! :D

 

I love Romeo and Juliet and always have, from the first time I read it at...13? It makes me remember what it was like to be young and to be completely carried away by the idea of True Love.

 

 

 

Wuv...twue wuv...

[cathmom]

Through this discussion I've realized that actually R and J is one of my favorite pieces of literature LOL! Thanks, everybody.

[mktkcb]

ummmm.....fighting families, boy falls for girl, girl falls for boy, irrational passion ensues, major dysfunction abounds, both end up dead....it's their own darn fault as far as I'm concerned. Stupid kids.